


i swear i thought i dreamed her

by soft_rains



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 06:31:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4695734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_rains/pseuds/soft_rains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>to keep and be kept (set in season four; possibly 4a, possibly post-4x16, the world may never know)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i swear i thought i dreamed her

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [no grave can hold my body down](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/140597) by azra. t. 



_I forgive you, I forgive you and she’s got her hands in your hair and her mouth on your mouth and she’s sucking the poison out of you and-_

 

Her forgiveness tastes like sweet chocolate and the bite of cinnamon, her forgiveness smells like jasmine and vanilla and you- you are not sure how else to deconstruct this: her hands in your hair, her hips canting into yours and you want to live in this moment, in the cradle of her thighs that welcomes you in again and again-

This is her forgiveness, and it makes you tremble, makes every dead nerve surge to being, brings life to your blood, air to your lungs. You’ve been dead for centuries and you want to ask how she is capable of this (how how _how_ ), but in the riptide of her absolution it feels so inconsequential. It is an impossible concept, her forgiveness, one you can’t fathom even as it pours out of her and into you, every kiss, every touch, every holy angle: You think of dreamshade, you think of water, you think of black lines retreating; her clean, clean hands burning the infection of your darkness away and and-

 

_maybe you’re an empty room and it hurts that the sun doesn’t touch your darkest corners anymore and it hurts but she loves you and-_

 

You burned the man you were a long time ago, the lieutenant, the brother, the straight laced sailor who believed in things like honor and service to the greater good. And as surely as you know nothing else but the salt of the sea, you know that the selfish, blackhearted scoundrel cannot survive the warmth she brings you, not after so many years sea-soaked, bones frozen, dead for all but a heartbeat; so you set him alight as well. She understand this, she does, she knows you set these men aflame, she knows they are still burning; she does not try to douse the flames, merely chases the ashes from your corners, the smoke stains from your windows, and there’s light for the first time in so long-

She understands that you cannot return to these men again; you do not think she would want you to even if you could. Lieutenant Jones, Captain Hook, she has no use for either, but _Killian_ -

She challenges you to take the still-smoldering embers, the kindling of what once was, what can never be again, and turn it into something better, something worthy of her, someone deserving of the warmth and renewal that crashes through you every time she touches her smile to yours.

 

_she’s there and she loves you and she’s twisting her fingers around the gaps in your hipbones and kissing you so clean that you’re gasping and it’s alive and it’s brutal and-_

 

A part of you separate from the pirate’s pride is willing to admit that you have been gone for this woman since she threatened your life. Many have held a knife to your throat, far fewer have been able to bind you, but she is the only one who has ever been able to look straight through to your coal-colored core and _see_. She is the only one, your only-

And it hasn’t changed, not at all, because her gaze locks onto yours, eyes green and shining, more precious than any gem you’ve ever stolen, and it burns right through you, that stare; like rum, like fire, like forging something new. She kisses you and it’s bright, it’s clean, it’s _yours_.

 

_redemption is the house of your body and how the tenants left and how quiet it was inside of you, how you forgot what you did there. How many hearts did you break? How many did you eat? How much dirt were you? How much ugly did your eyes see?_

 

And you don’t know how. You don’t know how you ended up here, a goddess kissing absolution into your neck, every desperate touch another prayer of penance, (a prayer of pure plight; that she may love what you are, what you were, what you will be) a prayer that you don’t bring your dirt to the sacred alter of her body. It feels like a sin to touch her, sacrilege to put your filthy fingers on her, to put your black heart in her hallowed hands, pure as the snow her mother was named for.

You don’t know how you ended up here, but you are drowning; in her forgiveness, in her beauty, in her compassion, in the grace of her savior heart. You are a sailor, your blood is saltwater and you have been drowned more than once, but it has never never been like this. It feels like being thrown overboard, it feels like being battered against the rocks, it feels like an angel kissing fire through your lips saying _please come back to me_. Your mouth is wet with the salt of tears, the slick of spit, and you do not know what belongs to who, you do not know anything but that you belong to her and that you feel _clean_ in the shadow of her divinity.

(Given the contents of your blood, the saltwater is almost certainly yours).

 

_And she found you, and found you and dug you out of yourself and thought you were sweet as wine and tasted you and wanted to keep you. Wanted to hold you in the heart of her and keep you and keep you._

 

And you still can’t fathom that she could want you like this, but oh, how little it matters now. She kisses your neck like she wants to trail sweet kisses along your heart, but the steady pulse of your racing blood is as close as she can get. She kisses you like she wants to keep you, like you won’t have to watch her walk away from you again (you will, somehow you know you will, it hurts even as it heals). She kisses you like you are something holy too, like you have anything to offer her but split knuckles, bloody hands, a fight that never dies. But it belongs to her now, for better or worse, that fight in you. Here, at the altar you’ve built to your love, in this anointed bed, in these sacred sheets, you swear eternal fealty to the goddess above you. You have done this before (swearing yourself to her, not _this_ because _Gods_ ) in a thousand different ways, but you think this is the first time she listens, the first time she wants to hear promises of loyalty in conjunction with lifetimes (one could never be enough, your soul is hers to possess in this life and the next, and the next after that; any time, any realm, any reality; always, always _hers_ ).

You think some of this might tumble from your lips in broken murmurs between the wet kisses you plant down her sternum (hoping they take root, that your love for her blossoms in her ribcage, that there comes a day the inside of her chest cavity is so full of you that she cannot doubt your love) because she is shaking as hard as you, feeding the words back to you, kissing them into your mouth, into any patch of skin her hot breath can find- _yes please yes mine yes_ always-

 

_I forgive you and she didn’t ask, I forgive you and she didn’t care what you did or who you hurt, I forgive you and how she put herself on the ground next to you, I forgive you, I forgive you._

 

And she’s never asked, not once, about your sins. She waits for you to lay them at her feet, an offering, a supplication. She waits for you to fall to your knees every time, and every time she takes these sins from you, washes the dirt and the hurt from your hands and replaces it with her; gets on her knees with you and kisses the shame from your eyes, the rage from your hands, kisses you until you fly apart beneath how it feels to be absolved by the purest light you’ve ever touched. You could burn if she allowed it, but you know instinctively that she never will.

She kisses you until your knees give out, until your back breaks under the weight of how you worship her and the two of you are tangled up in each other on the ground, whispering the sweet words of lovers, devouring them from each other like they are a holy book your souls could never be full of.

(You feel the pages flutter in your stomach every time she smiles at you from across a distance).

 

_Kiss your forehead, wipe the salt from your eyes, taste the ocean roaring like thunder in your belly, I forgive you, her hands were olive branches and she fed them to you._

 

You call her princess to get under her skin, but like this, writhing and astride you, she is every inch the queen she should have been; the regal line of her neck, the flushed red of her skin, the way her eyes blaze as they meet yours. She won’t be signing any treaties in this realm, but she draws them up for you anyways; offers you peace from yourself, peace from your darkness. You try to tell yourself she’d do this for anyone, but the way she strokes the scar on your cheek, the hair from your brow, the tears from the hollows of your eyes; you know this is only for you. You alone get to witness the couldhavebeen queen build herself a throne in the cavity of your chest.

And once again, you are back to being incapable of fathoming- well, anything, really, about this most beautiful majesty of yours. This is what you know: she has your sword, she has your heart, and somehow you have her forgiveness, have someone to chase away the shadows of the eternal night that lives in you. You don’t deserve it, you never will, but you have it, and you will cling to this, to _her_ , with every fiber of your soul.

 

_And how careful you moved in her and how touching her felt like burning, and how you were an empty house and she was a chair and she put herself inside you and the tenants came back and drank sweet cherry wine in the pit of your stomach and-_

 

She takes your hand from where it rests on her back and pins it above your head with her own, the other reaching for the scar tissue of your wrist, giving it the same treatment. She is trying to hallow you, trying to turn you into a church that only she has the key to, that only she can worship at, that only she can find the heavens' solace in. You know this is her goal because it is what you seek to do to her as well, and you think she knows by the shaky smile that graces her lips before you sway your hips just so and she is falling forward into you, chest to chest, heart to heart, and the sounds your bodies make, shifting as you sink further into each other (until you can’t possibly still be two separate people) are more sacred than any psalm you’ve heard in any religion, any realm. Breathless gasps and airy moans fill your ears until you can hear nothing but her, until you can _smell taste see_ nothing but her divine forgiveness and she stills so suddenly- so fragile so soft so warm and clean and you-

Oh, how you love your chapel.

 

_the sun came back, I forgive you, how light her hands were, I forgive you, how soft._

 

Her hands leave your own to sweep down to your face and she is _everywhere_ , ubiquitous as any deity. Her thumbs stroke your cheeks, the rest of her fingers running through the sweat slick hair behind your ears. She is _everything_ and her forgiveness is not something to tremble before; it is something to welcome again and again until you are the steadiest port she could hope to dock in, something no storm (not yours, not hers, not anyone else’s) could ever hope to tear asunder. There isn’t anything that could part you from her side; no villain, no curse, no grave could hold you from her.

Her forgiveness is sweet chocolate and crisp jasmine and you are a room filled with light.

**Author's Note:**

> so i haven't written anything in over a year and i wrote this while 2.5 kinds of messed up so do not even try to judge me honestly it's not even worth it. 
> 
> also i didn't have a clue what to put for a summary so i used my otp tag for them on tumblr, if you're wondering why the summary has nothing to do with anything.
> 
> poem: no grave can hold my body down by azra. t


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